Venning: School bus contract numbers misleading

February 3, 2012

The Education Department has defended the process for awarding new school bus contracts to the Parliamentary Committee investigating the issue.

The Committee were told that 107 of the 169 contracts were awarded to incumbent operators and decisions were based on “value for money”.
Member for Schubert, Mr Ivan Venning said the figures presented regarding the number of contracts were misleading.

“The Victorian company that was successful in being awarded a large number of contracts ahead of local operators admittedly had operated in South Australia for a number of years, but they only had one contract.

“This is being used to skew the figures and make it appear as if a large proportion of contacts have been awarded, to incumbent, local operators, when we know that was not the case.

“In fact almost 50% of the contracts were awarded to a Victorian company” said Mr Venning.

“The reasoning that decisions were based on “value for money”, but the question is how realistic was the benchmark figure?

“According to accounting advice received it would appear that it was not viable into the future for these small local operators to continue a successful business at the price point that was set.

“The Labor Government have had no regard for the years of loyal service that some of these local operators provided.

“Many local businesses unfortunately have now had to shut their doors as they were not awarded contracts this year.

“If that’s not bad enough I have heard some operators in the Barossa region, who had lost their contracts were asked to continue on for another term or two this year because the interstate company that won the contract did not have enough buses for the beginning of the school year.

“What an absolute slap in the face! This saga just goes from bad to worse.

“The State Labor Government has again showed they do not care about rural South Australia or small business. “One can only hope that the inquiry reveals as much as possible about this clearly flawed process” he said.